Tens of thousands of people are still being evicted each month through foreclosure, and now private equity firms and hedge funds are executing a massive land grab in cities across the country.
In some cities, like Phoenix, there are already Wall Street-owned homes on every single block by the hedge fund Blackstone.

These Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms are pretending to help by renting out these vacant houses -- but we know that they are just trying to make more money off the banks of the 99%. One of these private equity firms has even released a new risky security backed by rental payments -- which is just like the mortgage-backed securities that destroyed the economy in 2008.

The story of Laura and her family show how we must stop this land grab and demand that housing be enshrined as a human right, not a means to make a short-term profit.

Laura, her son and 3 small dogs have lived in their Portage Park home for the last seven years. With the help of a partner, she bought the home in 2006 for nearly $400,000. After the market crashed, they attempted to refinance the mortgage. Following the bank’s instructions, Laura and her partner missed three months of their mortgage payments to qualify for a loan modification. But instead of working with the family, Bank of America put the home in foreclosure, using the highly controversial process of “dual tracking” in which banks simultaneously put families in the process of modifying their loans and put the loan in the foreclosure pipeline.

In Laura’s case -- as with so many other homeowners across the country -- the foreclosure process won.

Her home was sold at an auction and bought back by the government-owned mortgage giant Fannie Mae -- which then allowed a private equity firm, The Cogsville Group, to buy the right to manage her house and collect rent from the family. But when her home flooded this past spring, the company did not help her with clean up, mold remediation or repairs.

In efforts to pressure Cogsville to assume responsibility for its property management, Laura’s partner stopped paying the rent. But instead of negotiating under the circumstances, the family received an eviction notice.

Laura and her family are asking that the eviction be dropped, and that the Cogsville Group offer Laura a new lease with an option to buy.

Help us stop Laura’s eviction -- and send a message to Wall Street that they can no longer exploit our human needs for their short term profits!

The other reason for the foreclosure to rental conversion is to obliterate the paper trail of fraud regarding the transfer of title and deed billing over and over and over again among among service companies since the 90's.

Plus the interest rate deduction on these homes transfers to the fat cats as well as they convert home ownership to rentals and they will probably force renters insurance down the renters throats so they can then make wildly fraudulent rental damage claims whenever a renter moves.

I strongly believe that the home rental business is part of a multi-level attack that also involves unfair credit card rules that completely favor the banks and credit card companies. Credit card debt is possibly the biggest profit maker for wall street and the banks, even moreso than homes.

Although home rentals will probably soon fill another profit niche and probably outpace even credit card debt profits. A mortgage at 4% interest rate charge has a much smaller profit margin when compared to 2,000 dollar a month rent or interest rate charges on credit card debt.

The unending credit card debt cycle helps lower credit scores which in turn make home ownership less affordable.To rub it in the rest of the way, we have legions of conservative consumer advocates who blame anyone who has debt and defends the credit card companies and their anti family values to the hilt.

Did you know that according to conservative consumer advocates natural disasters are nothing more than "personal drama" and therefore in no way should people who lose their homes via a natural disaster be entitled to debt neutrality, which is simply the freezing of interest rate charges, penalties and fees on existing credit card debt.

I personally have found several ridiculous credit card rules in place that I hope to see overturned one day and hope to one day see the creation of actual debt suspension rights for consumers along the debt neutrality for those who suffer a life changing event beyond their control.

By insisting that housing should be enshrined as a right, the Article's Author(s) will loose. ("The story of Laura and her family show how we must stop this land grab and demand that housing be enshrined as a human right, not a means to make a short-term profit.") The Banksters in the US have been making "profit" this way not on a short-term basis but over the long, long 100 years since they politically forced their way into controlling the monetary system. But for this control, none of us would be in this frigging chaos, Laura and her family included. Demand justice instead by rising up against their monopoly on the monetary system.

While this write up would lead you to believe only the rich stand to gain by foreclosing, the true answer is many people get hurt. This isn't a 1% vice 99% problem.

Who else gets hurt? Everyone who is invested in Blackstone. All those retirement funds, 401K's, IRAs, pension funds and other mutual funds and savings that were invested in Blackstone. Many people (retirees, workers, union pensions, etc.) are invested in Wall Street and banks. I don't envy Schlegel, but there are two sides to this story. Who should take the fall? People who invested their life savings to save for retirement or people who didn't adhere to their mortgage contract?

Banks create money out of thin air. That is what fractional banking is about. Sheer profit out of the blue at no cost to the banks.

The cost is to the general wealth held by the nation. We all pay for the bankers rampant profit.

But more than that they gamble and create derivatives further inflating and eventually crashing their capitalist system. Then we the 99% pay them out to start over again.

Don't get it wrong and follow the mind wash about smaller Govt..

WE NEED a strong govt directed by the 99% for the 99%.

To get that we have to crack the 1% rule and set in place a fairer redistribution of wealth and get rid of the corporate parasites.

YES PROFIT is a dirty word when it goes to parasites who play with money and create greater inequity while filling their pockets and produce nothing but misery for the 99%.

The banking system has to be state owned and only the state [ ie the 99% ] having the power to print money. That would lower taxes as Govt can use printed money to fund social programs such as health and education, research and job creation.

When private bankers [ including the Feds ] print money for their own selfish gains then you get a monster.

Abraham Lincoln and others fought the bankers. They lost. Have no sympathy for this parasitic scourge. They are the problem.

Many starve around the world while others along side gorge themselves. Some people ignore this and others see it is wrong.
Which view is taken can depend on your position of how your mind works. There are people who have learned to be utterly focused on self and some who are unable to empathize with others because they are damaged - psychopaths.

Most people do feel for others and hate seeing others go without. Many share gladly when they have too much. Some will share when they don't have enough but will expect sharing to be two way. Working together helps survival.

Mankind is at at crossroads with 7 billion which is far too many for the planet to provide for long term. As a consequence the planets resources are being consumed, widespread pollution, loss of species, change of environment on a massive scale which will spell doom for mankind. Yet the greedy still ask for more. The 1% are the enemy of all life forms. A scourge

The US population have played a major part in fouling up the planet with consumerism and waste. The 1% have been the major culprits in developing a dangerous hegemony.

A fundamental shift in values and learning is about to happen one way or another.

Will humanity survive - who knows.

Dealing with this situation is discussed by Albert Einstein in 1949. Much off what he says is just as relevant today. One of the World greatest thinkers in living memory. A humble man.

Yes but an important part of banking puts a different light on that money " loaned".
Banks are allowed to loan 90% of deposited money.

So they take the dollar deposited and loan 90% of that to their sister bank. The sister banks then loans 90% of that back to the original bank which in turn loans 90% of that back to the sister bank.... and so on.

Run that through your calculator and you will find that your dollar gives then a total of $10 for them to play with $9 of which is created out of thin air. Then the money is loaned out and returned with interest. Quite a racket.

So the money they foreclose on is money that cost them nothing. But the loans are mixed up with other transactions and sold as derivatives which are traded and gambled with.

The whole nonsense is protected by laws designed to cover the banks activity and yet penalize the lender who is paying ramped up prices inflated by bank activity for banker's profit.

If I lent you a dollar that cost me nothing and you lost it then I have also lost nothing.

But banks do much better than that when they foreclose as they usually have had payments including interest which cost them nothing also.

Banks consider they have a right to operate this way and that "right" was given to them by you the voter and taxpayer.

But the Bankers control the politicians. Money is power and corruption is endemic.

As long as bankers can "print " money then they can "buy" the rest.

A better system is needed

100% of loaned money must be original deposit. Only the Govt can issue new money.

The banks have abused their privileged position and power, and always do. Govts must stop them and take over their function . The wealth of the nation is owned by the 99 + 0.999%: not the 0.001%

When you write a check to pay a bill, pay online or use credit cards no notes are used. The transaction is simply a change of figures in accounts. Again no notes are needed. Enormous transfers of money are done daily without notes. The actual account balance figures are the significant indication to wealth or debt.

The term "Printing money" refers to the creation of an increase in "wealth" by the changing of figures in an account without a corresponding debit. In other words wealth creation on paper without cost. ie free money.

It goes on all the time in a simple loan with interest.

But banks loan out more money than what they have in deposits, so they create this money by paper entry and gather it in as repayments.

There is plenty of information sources about this unscrupulous practice which concentrated societies wealth into the hands of a few.

Both of these countries are closely allied to the US but have state banks. The UK nationalized theirs in 1946.

The US Fed is privately owned in spite of the Govt appointees added to the board. So the creation of money by the feds feeds the families owning the Federal Reserve at our cost. That new money dilutes the value of our wealth.

The Feds admit "printing money" in the guise of Quantitative easing but hey do it all the time. The problem for the public is that so much hype and complexity surrounds the financial discussions that the public just operate on blind faith. Blind indeed. Robbed blind.

The Feds, brought into being by an act of congress with only 4 present late on Xmas eve 1913. No one was around to oppose it. A sneaky act after long debate in the days before opposing it. Check it if you are in doubt.

"Anyone who thinks that "their" political party has the answers is brainwashed...both dems and republicans bow to wall street and facilitate, or at best turn a blind eye to, the financial abuse going on since its quid pro quo between Washington and Wall Street. People should wake up and think for themselves rather than letting forces like Fox news or CNBC do the thinking for them. Just look at the facts...the national debt and deficits have grown exponential for past 40 years regardless of political party in the white house."

The Feds are robbing America blind. A quote from the above website -

"The way our system works, whenever more money is created more debt is created as well.

For example, whenever the U.S. government wants to spend more money than it takes in (which happens constantly), it has to go ask the Federal Reserve for it. The federal government gives U.S. Treasury bonds to the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve gives the U.S. government "Federal Reserve Notes" in return. Usually this is just done electronically.

So where does the Federal Reserve get the Federal Reserve Notes?

It just creates them out of thin air.

Wouldn't you like to be able to create money out of thin air?

Instead of issuing money directly, the U.S. government lets the Federal Reserve create it out of thin air and then the U.S. government borrows it.

Talk about stupid."

But then there is the ongoing interest to be paid by the Govt. The robbery of taxpayers continues.

When the Fed supplies money to the Govt by an electronic transaction into the Govt accounts held in private banks, then the private banks can create further money from this [ up to 9 times the deposit ] allowable by fractional reserve rules. This exta new money is profit for those private banks so it is loaned out to grow further.

Public funds paid very dearly then used to bloat the bankers even further and dilute our money even further. A continuing cycle.

We can never get ahead under this system of debt spiral. In 2011 the Govt paid 454 billion dollars in interest on this debt. It steadily sees growth being exponential.

North Dakota has a state bank and it is a GOP territory. One of the more stable financial institutions, has never been bailed out and provides many benefits directly to the people of the state. Wall St hate it.

It was never the intention of he founding fathers, nor the public since, that our money was created by debt to private bankers.

do you know Stephanie kelton - (c. 5:22) “So, let’s begin with the first lesson. What is money? All money exists as an IOU. It’s a debt. When we say, ‘I owe you,’ we mean two people are involved in every monetary relationship. The ‘I’ is the debtor. The ‘U’ is the creditor. I Owe You. IOUs are recorded in what we call the money of account. The money of account in Australia is the Australian dollar. The money of account in the U.S., the U.S. dollar. The money of account in Japan, the Japanese Yen. In Britain, the British pound. In Italy, the Euro. Do you see a difference? You will by the end of this talk.

(c. 6:21) “The money of account is something abstract, like a metre, a kilogram, a hectare. It’s not something you can touch or feel. It’s representational, something only a human could imagine. In any modern nation the money of account is chosen by the national government. MMT emphasises the state’s power over money. This is not something new. It dates back as far as Aristotle. You can find it in Adam Smith and in the work of John Maynard Keynes. I will read a brief quote from Keynes who said:

“‘The age of chartalist, or state money, was reached when the State claimed the right to declare what thing should answer as money of account. Today, all civilised money is, beyond the possibility of dispute, chartalist’—state money.

“A sovereign government defines the money of account. A sovereign government imposes taxes, fees, and other obligations to be paid to be paid to the state. A sovereign government decides what it will accept in payment to itself. And sovereign government chooses how it will make its own payments to others. Most governments in the world today choose their own unique money of account. And they issue their own unique currency. One nation, one money, is the rule in almost every corner of the world today. U.S. dollars, bills and coins. Mexican pesos, bills and coins. British pounds, notes and coins. Most governments also require that taxes be paid in a currency that the state has the exclusive power to issue. These currencies are sovereign money.

(c. 8:50) “As long as the state has the power to enforce its tax laws, the people will need the government’s money. The currency will have value. People will work to sell things—goods and services—to the government in order to get government money. Whatever the government accepts in payment to itself becomes the ultimate, ‘definitive,’ money in the economy. It is the only way to settle a debt. You must use government money. We can imagine in any economy a hierarchy of money. But not all money is created equal. The most acceptable money sits at the top of the pyramid. Those are the IOUs that everyone accepts and everyone must accept. Those are the IOUs that are ultimately needed to pay our debts. Those are the government’s IOUs. The rest of us can go in debt, issue IOUs, but our debt is not as good as government debt. It’s not as acceptable. It can’t be used to pay for things.

(c. 10:25) “In the U.S., the hierarchy looks like this: The government’s IOU—the United States dollar—sits at the top of the pyramid. It is a fiat currency. The United States government is the monopoly issuer of the U.S. dollar—the only entity on the planet that can legally create the currency. The U.S. government taxes in dollars. It spends in dollars. And it controls its own currency. Why is this important? What are the benefits of issuing your own currency? They are extraordinary.

(c. 11:19) “The government, when it issues its own currency, and goes into debt in that currency can always pay its debt, can never go broke, can never run out of money. It can afford anything that is for sale in that currency. It doesn’t need to borrow its own currency. And it can set its own interest rate. It does not have to pay what markets want. It does not become a victim to speculation, to bond vigilantes. It has additional policy space. It can do things for its economy and for its people that a government that does not have a sovereign currency cannot do.

(c. 12:18) “Think about what the hierarchy would look like under a gold standard. Many governments operated under gold or silver or both for some period of time in our world history. Under a gold standard, the government promises to convert its currency into gold. In that situation, what sits at the top of the pyramid is not the state’s currency, but the gold reserves. This means that the government must be careful about how much it spends. If it spends too much of its own currency, it can jeopardise the entire system because it may not be able to convert currency into gold as promised. You have to limit your spending and limit what you do with your policies. Governments operating under a gold standard do not have sovereign currency.

you said it all right here - But then Wall St and the banking cartel would not allow this and they control the Govt not the voter.- so the solution is very obvious and the occupation in the park might have been the opening shot. take back control of the government - then who cares where the gold is. the government and the economy must be under democratic control - just as the populists argued in the late 1800's

My comment is that the greed knows no bounds and the creation of derivatives and hedge funds
plus deregulation has allowed a ballooning of gambling and raising of stakes. The big boys behind banking secure their ill gotten gains in solid assets so when dips or crashes occur in the merry go round of financial speculation, then already the value has been extracted and stashed away. Every crash is then an opportunity manufactured to snap up more cheap fire sale assets. Or perhaps a bail out.
Small players and the taxpayer loose out.

Its a racket. Banks bleed the country without producing anything, growing any food nor providing any services except filling their own pockets as they lessen the worth of money in circulation with the inflation they cause.

As massive amounts of money are created by private banks for their own profit, then to shift this function to the Govt and so fill the Govt coffers for public good, is a simple answer.

No more Govt debt as no borrowing would be needed. Govt could actually fund many schemes and set up state banks like North Dakota has . All profits go back to the community.
Taxes could be lowered, universal health schemes funded and a universal superannuation scheme.

There is nothing magic about all this . it is just that the public are kept ignorant and afraid to challenge the Bankers and Wall St thugs. Bankers have ample money to bribe and corrupt officials. politicians and fund political parties. They also control the media as has been pointed out. You get your little dose of Fox each day to keep you stupid.

Money bred power and corruption on a massive scale. The Govt is controlled.

Actually, I'm not referring to that profit gained by usury. What I'm referring to is that banks are allowed to loan out more money than they have! They only need to keep a small portion of real money on their balance sheet for collateral just in case something goes wrong. So, in a very real sense the banks are creating money out of nothing. Amazing, but true.

The answer to your question is very simple. The banks can't get enough. They get greedy and loan out way way more than they can cover. They loan out money to people who should not be borrowing money in the first place. They make the assumption nobody is going to default, but when somebody does that is when the trouble starts.

Low-doc loans were reportedly forced upon people who didn't need them in the first instance, primarily because they netted a higher interest rate. These riskier loans were packaged up, and given tripleA ratings by agencies like Standard and Poor, and onsold to various financial institutions and hedge funds, with the intention of crippling those funds, readying them for corporate piracy.

Then there's the issue of illegal robo-signing on mortgages that were not in default, to speed up the process of crashing the economy, and forcing the govt into a position of bailouts, and fleecing the public purse.

This is all rather well documented in the film "Inside Job", narrated by Matt Damon.

Yep; And the real losers are not so much the folk who probably should have never gotten a mortgage who are getting defaulted on (not that I am to judge), but all us people who held regular jobs all our lives, lived frugal, and responsibly saved our money which because of these bank antics are now getting our life savings devalued into nothing.

Interesting. Around here you have to show your library card to access their computers, I think.

And by "Bilderberg" I assume you mean the annual behind-closed-doors, no press allowed meeting of the world's elite. Yes, we have. And by "we" I mean the forum members. It's been discussed occasionally although some forum members eschew such topics. But, fuck them.

Sounds like you know some important info. Bilderberg is a diversion. The elites of the elites (EOTE) are another group that are truly secretive. We don't know who they are and when they meet. I heard they are part of The Knights of the Templar. I'm still researching it.

US is thinking long term. They need lots of money to research alien technology at area 51 and Plum Island. Monsanto is already using some alien technology. They don't mind putting the country into debt because these technologies will make US rich in a few years.